


Love, Committed.

by PepperCat



Category: The Flash (TV 1990), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Character Study, Conversations, Dark, F/M, Family Drama, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Negotiations, Obsession, Past Relationship(s), Sleight of Hand, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 12:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18993073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: Of all the women he ever loved, she's the only one who lived long enough to return his feelings.





	Love, Committed.

**Author's Note:**

> Rating is for content, not for smut.
> 
> We haven't exactly seen a lot of James Jesse in the 2014 TV show, but one thing we _do_ see is that in his second appearance, he's sometimes wearing a ring on the finger and hand where you'd expect someone to wear a wedding ring. That, combined with his post-first-season lack of interaction with Axel and a couple of apparent logical inconsistencies in season four, got me thinking.
> 
> Please mind the tags. James Jesse in the 1990 show was, if anything, a little more disconcerting. This is one of those fics you _really_ might want to skip if you are strongly invested in James Jesse being attached to Axel.

_Snip._

The scissors bite through bright paper, leaving a little crosswise tear at the tip of the blades. You don't get those with really sharp scissors.

He doesn't get really sharp scissors.

The door buzzer blats.

"You've got a visitor, Jesse."

 _Snip_. "Did I give permission for a visitor, Henckels?" He hears the guard swallow and take a step back. Satisfactory. "You wouldn't want me to get _startled_ , now would you?"

 _Snip_ , and the scraps of paper fall away easy as names used to, once, leave behind a new design. He begins unfolding it and the little hand-holding shapes bobble and dance in the lights. He's giggling softly as footsteps come closer to the window-wall--

"I've been on your visitor's list since you first ended up here, Jesse."

It's been so long since there was a surprise.

Construction-paper joints rip as he straightens, dips, pivots up and off the chair. The scissors stay locked around his fingers, clank dull when his hands press against the thick glass.

"Prank." It's a purr; it's a growl. It's been so _long_ , and the grin splits his face, teeth shining.

She doesn't flinch (his darling, she never would), but she doesn't smile back, either, stands safely back.

"Prank," he says again. She's older now, looking grim, and dressed a dull blue _suit_ , dear god, even before he helped her out she had more style than that. But he hasn't aged gently either, and perhaps it's in sympathy for his own awful clothes? She's back now, finally, regardless. "Prank, my dearest darling. My _love_." He quirks his eyebrows as he croons that last, and she looks like she might get angry. _Oooh_ he remembers her being angry; there's a _frisson_ of delight.

He rakes his hands back through his hair to make himself a little more presentable, and when they come back into sight the scissors are gone and he's holding a bouquet of red roses.

The guard makes a sort of whimpering noise, choked off.

She touches the guard's arm--while he's standing _right there_ , he'll kill Henckels later, cable or no cable--and says "A little privacy, please."

"Ma'am, are you sure--"

"Damn sure."

Henckels backs off, swallowing and nodding. Looks damn relieved to go out through the door.

Well. If she was just getting rid of him, that's alright. Maybe he won't kill the man after all. He smiles and holds up the bouquet, waggles it invitingly. "Prank, honeybun--" he starts, but she cuts him off just like she did the guard.

"It's Lockhart to you, Jesse."

* * *

"Now _that_ takes me back." Back before Central, back before the Trickster; dark nights and cat-and-mouse and that thrilling theatre encounter.

 _Back_ isn't very interesting. "Prank, why--"

" _Lockhart_." There's that edge in her voice, bringing back all those fraught moments. Awkward lover's spats. The times she beat him up and turned him over to the police. "Lockhart, Jesse."

"You'll always be my Prank, cupcake."

She crosses her arms and glances pointedly at the door that Henckels left through. He doesn't _think_ she'd really leave, but--

"Megan, my love, it's been so long." She frowns at _Megan_ , but really, if she wants him to use _that_ name, surely she can't object, after everything they've shared? "Why'd you finally come? The letters, the flowers, the guard's head?"

"Head?"

Whoops. "Just my little joke." Dammit, she should have-- you can't trust the postal service. Maybe they lost it. He could follow up.

\--it's been a while. Maybe it should stay lost.

"You know, darling," he drops his voice and waggles his eyebrows again, "if you want to arrange for conjugal visits, we'll have to make things _official_." He plucks at the jumpsuit. It's old, borrowed, and blue-- he's most of the way there--

"I want to talk about my son."

 _Well_.

He was going to keep it light, but he can humour her about this.

"Don't you mean _our_ son, dear?"

"I damn well don't."

"Megan. Please." Grinning again, but speaking a little lower, soft enough she'd _have_ to step closer to hear; and yet she doesn't. That hurts, though the smile doesn't falter. "You kept him. There must have been something there."

"I kept him, not you."

"Still. You can't have been _that_ upset."

"Or you didn't make much of an impression."

He gasps and clutches at his heart. "Megan! Don't tell me I meant so little to you."

"Come on, Jesse." She turns a little, paces towards the side of the room, still watching him; a little to the right of the window, but he can still see her. "You moved on, are you surprised I did?"

"That dilettante _bitch_?" She grimaces at the venom, and he rushes to reassure. "Darling, she was a fling." He tosses the roses aside to emphasize. "A side-piece. A Janey-come-lately, a two-dollar handbag, an envelope-licking Juliet, a _convenience_." He laughs. "The first time I see her, she's caterwauling across a courtroom about how she's carrying my _bayyyby_. I'd've remembered." He grins again. "She'd have remembered. You remember, don't you?"

Her mouth twists. He remembers that look, and it takes him back; he remembers seeing that expression so many times when she was Prank. And before, too; when she was in the casket for the trick, just before he fired up the chainsaw.

The memories don't make him soft, exactly, but they make him... a little more patient. It's been a while since he saw anyone but dullards and marks. He can afford to indulge her.

"There's no substitute for the real thing," he says, shaking his head. "There was never anyone but you. I understand. Our love-- it's frightening, darling. You needed time to come to terms with things." He'd pat her hand, if he could, but there's that damn glass in the way and she's not in arm's reach _anyway_. And Megan Lockhart will hardly put her hand through the delivery slot. She didn't even bring candy.

"Why _did_ you keep him?" He's a little curious. "Honestly."

"Maybe I just thought I'd like being a single mom." The twist is gone from her mouth. "Maybe I didn't want anyone else dealing with him."

There is no _may_ _be_ when it comes to what Megan Lockhart thinks. There never has been.

"Not even me?" He's leaning on the window-wall, grinning. "You know, not having a good role model can be really rough on a kid. You weren't honest about who his father was. And maybe you didn't _mean_ to bring your work home with you, but you sure ended up raising a clever little sneak. _I_ didn't teach him that." He dips his head. "I mean, it was _useful_ , but I didn't teach him."

"My son has problems." Her voice has that lovely edge to it, like all the times she was telling him _I'm not Prank_ , steady through her teeth. "He left home as soon as he could, and yes he made it very hard to find him--"

"Like mother like son, hmm?"

She goes very quiet at that. Goes _still_. He didn't expect to hit a nerve.

"Was he mean to you?" It's a teasing, toying question, but he _does_ want to know. There are a lot of people his son is welcome to toy with and upset, a lot of acceptable collateral damage.

Prank is not one of them.

"That doesn't matter." She steps forward. "What matters is that my baby boy is in Iron Heights because of you, Jesse--" she puts the fingertips of one hand against the glass-- "and you are so goddamn lucky there is this wall between us right now."

Her voice is measured, and he can read her gaze perfectly well; she will kill him when she gets the chance. Nothing stupid or sloppy about it, no hectic rush, but whatever qualms she once had about murder have been set calmly aside long ago.

Of all the women he ever loved, Megan Lockhart is the only one who lived long enough to return his feelings.

"You can't blame me for Axel's choices." He doesn't put the edge on it that he could. He doesn't want to hurt her, not in a petty little way. Kill her, yes, eventually, probably with a lot of blood and some brief but heartfelt screaming, but not _hurt_ her. "It's in his blood, Megan. He's my son. He was _always_ going to be this way."

"He's my blood too." That's... something to consider. He was never very good at sharing. People, credit, attention... "He wasn't perfect, but he would never, _never_ have done those things without you picking at him!"

Hmh.

He pushes back from the window-wall a little, giving it some thought. He'd expect Megan to leave her stamp on the boy, of course; she's a forceful woman. And thinking about it, the details aren't very clear but he's pretty sure that he himself certainly didn't need quite so much patient hand-holding to get started. If he hadn't _encouraged_ the boy...

The brat could have grown up boring at best.

No point dwelling on _that_ joyless possibility.

"I guess we'll never know."

"No," she says, "but I guess we're going to learn, going forward."

Oooh. He wasn't expecting a plan. That's interesting. Usually other people just have these soft little goals you can shoulder or prick aside, but--

She was always something special.

"Go on."

"You're going to leave him alone."

He feels his grin flatten, teeth set on edge as he lowers his voice. "Or what?" The scissors flick into his hand again. He sets them against the glass, letting them glimmer in the light. "You gonna kill me?"

She doesn't flinch. Oh, darling.

"I could," she says. "But my getting caught wouldn't do him any good. No, Jesse--"

"Trickster." This isn't so friendly anymore. "He's my son! _Mine_ _!_ "

"Trickster," she says after a minute. She's looking at him so _easily_. No-one's been that calm around him in years. "You're going to leave him alone. You're not going to write to him. You're not going to write _back_ to him. You're not getting him wrapped up one way or another in your next crazy plan. As far as anyone's concerned-- as far as _he's_ concerned-- you don't have a son."

He's waiting for the threat. It should be something interesting, if she's not going to kill him, but she doesn't say anything.

Poor delivery.

"Why would I agree to that?"

"Because if you do I'll come visit you."

" _Prank_ ," he says, softly, delighted, and she doesn't correct him.

"Once a month," she says. "Three hours."

"That's not very long." He looks at her sideways, pouting a little. "I could write a lot of letters in all the time that isn't _three hours a month_ , you know. Family is very important."

"It's longer than they gave you with Dr. Veidt."

"He came more often."

"But he didn't last. Come on, Jesse, do you _really_ want to go back to only seeing the prison guards and your cable TV?"

Ugh. No. There just aren't enough good shows on right now, and--

"Fine." _God_ , this woman. "Fine, alright! Three hours a month." He holds up a finger and taps it warningly on the glass. "All at once."

She nods. "The first Thursday each month. Starting at noon." That's not so bad. It's practically the end of the month now. "And you leave Axel alone."

"Axel, who's Axel? I swear it, honeybun." He digs at the delivery slot, slips as much of his hand as he can through. The angle's bad, the slot is shallow; he curls half his hand towards her. "Shake on it?" She's not that foolish, he's not expecting, but the air itself feels warm from her presence, and it's been so _long_ \--

She drops something into his hand instead, heavy and smooth, a little smaller than an eyeball. He pulls it back in.

Well. That's pretty.

The skull-shaped ring glimmers like scissors in the light as he slips it on. He's all dressed up now--old, borrowed, blue, and something new to complete the set.

"Darling," he says, grinning at her. "You shouldn't have."

"You either." He laughs at that. "But here we are."

"And here we're going to be."

"Next Thursday." She steps back. "I'll get it set up."

"I can't wait."

She's almost to the door when he calls her name.

"You know, Megan," he says, turning the ring on his finger. "This rekindled romance... It gives me something to hope for. You coming to see me..." He looks up and over at her, with her hand on the door. "I really _can't_ wait. Maybe I'll come see _you_ , next time I get out."

She straightens her shoulders at that, and smiles a little. Just in the corners of her mouth. Has that calm and ready look in her dark eyes.

She _does_ understand what love is, after all. What it ends up meaning.

"Maybe you should try that," she says, and goes.

He sits under the lights, turning and twirling the ring on his finger, watching its frozen grin spin in and out of sight.

You wait long enough, love finds a way.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the only Megan Lockhart/James Jesse fic on AO3 and I am not one bit surprised.
> 
> Whew. Uhm... yeah. Look, a reason Jesse never got back in touch with Axel after he escaped.
> 
> Anyway. There's a lot to be said about the TV version of James Jesse (I ramble about it on Tumblr, and [usually try to tag it](https://peppersandcats.tumblr.com/tagged/tv!james-jesse); my poking at the presence of the ring is there). I haven't talked as much about Megan Lockhart, but I generally do think that the badass awkwardly-socialized capable-of-being-amoral private-detective single-mom could have raised a kid who was very good at hiding things from his mom. And who ran away to Central. And who then had things go pretty damn badly.
> 
> (Plus, you know, I feel she actually looks a little more like Axel than Zoey does.)
> 
> The meetings are going to be on Thursdays because the first episode with the Trickster aired on a Thursday.
> 
> Dr. Veidt is a reference to the unnamed criminal psychologist that James Jesse talked into committing suicide, so-named because Conrad Veidt played the titular _The Man Who Laughs_ and TV!Jesse always puts me in mind of the Joker. (I'd have used the name of the prison psychiatrist who thought he was putting one over on the Joker from a short story collection I own if I could find the damn thing right now.)


End file.
